Football Free Zones :Baltimore Bars With No TV’s

There’s no denying it. Football is basically the new religion in America. The game once took a backseat to baseball, but ever since the 1994 MLB strike, the NFL has made huge gains in popularity and revenue every year, with no sign of slowing down anytime soon (unless they can’t resolve their own labor issues by next year).

We’ve had a hard time figuring out what to do with ourselves on Sundays lately, inasmuch as the entire city turns purple and shuts down. Non-football fans are pretty much free to walk around naked and rob banks on Sunday afternoons, since nobody’s paying attention anyway. By the same token, if you want to go to where people are, it can be nearly impossible to escape football.

Football and church have a lot in common. They both bore the Chop to death.

Even our humble Chophouse has its living room commandeered by Roommate and his girlfriend every Sunday, so the entire first floor is basically given over to football, takeout, and couch-sprawling. Since we can’t keep our house as a football free zone, and because staying upstairs with nothing else on TV only goes so far, by 7 or 8 we’re usually ready to break the dull monotony with a drink or two between a different set of walls.

Most bars use screen size and premium football channels as selling points to draw the crowds in, but for us, just the opposite will get us in the door. Here are a few of our favorite local spots which don’t have any televisions in the bar whatsoever. These are the kind of places where you have little choice but to talk to the person next to you at the bar. Or, you know, check the scores on your smartphone.

These hours are only guidelines, but should be mostly accurate. If you’re looking for the Chop on a Sunday evening, odds are good you’ll find us in one of these spots. What about you, Baltimore? How do you beat the Sunday doldrums and fill the void, if not with football?